27 September 2009

The Soloist

On this day in 1936, British-born aviator Beryl Markham was aboard the R.M.S. Queen Mary on her way to England after flying solo east-to-west across the Atlantic. She was the first woman to do so, and the first person to make it from England to North America non-stop.

Markham, a horse-trainer in Kenya where she was raised from the age of four, was a friend of Karen Blixen, aka Isak Dinesen, and appeared in her memoir, Out of Africa, as the tomboy, Felicity.